England's answer to Conor McGregor is Liverpool's new favourite sporting son

Liverpool has a new favourite sporting son, and, unusually, he is not playing for either the red or blue side of the city.

Paddy ‘the Baddy’ Pimblett is England’s most renowned UFC star after rising to prominence with a combination of knockout blows and his outspoken straight talking.

Pimblett is not someone who does things by the book, which is something he embraces fully and, among other things, Pimblett is known for ballooning up between his fights in a fashion reminiscent of Ricky Hatton -  insert ‘Paddy the Fatty’ for 'Ricky Fatton'.

“I either look like a smackhead or fat b------,” says the 28-year-old, as he sits across from Telegraph Sport in the Breakfast Lounge cafe he frequents.

Pimblett takes little time to devour his cajun chicken baguette - augmented with cheese and peppers - before a sizeable breakfast wrap suffers the same fate. A chocolate doughnut and hot chocolate are also ordered, further hammering home that Paddy does not have an imminent fight around the corner.

It is food fit for a king, but Pimblett is not the only one who is well taken care of inside. His Tri XL bulldog Lenny has accompanied Pimblett for lunch after being dropped off by fiancee Lauren.

Lenny is “always well fed” and, when he enters, one of the chefs immediately approaches with a box labelled ‘Lenny’s Lunch’, which it turns out is full of cut up sausages.

The unbeaten Pimblett is one of the biggest names in mixed martial arts despite just having four fights at UFC level. A social media sensation, Pimblett boasts a following of over three million across his Instagram and YouTube channels.

A Scouser through and through, Pimblett can barely take a step in his home city without being hounded by fans while his devotion to Jurgen Klopp is perhaps only matched by his determination to get back into shape for a big fight.

“I’m just a lad from Liverpool who worked hard, that’s it,” he says. “I've got a little bit of God given talent too. I'm unapologetically myself. If I think what I've said is right, I won't apologise for it. 

"I do me, lad. No one will ever change me. Simple as that. What you see is what you get. I’d be in jail [without MMA]. I don’t think I could do another job."

Pimblett has drawn comparisons with Conor McGregor for his sky-high self belief and showmanship in the cage, although he is yet to win a championship title and it is likely to be a few years before he challenges for one.

Earlier in the day Telegraph Sport first met Pimblett at his Next Generation gym, which is just 10 minutes away from his beloved Anfield.

The musty smell is hard to ignore but the facility, full of graffiti on the walls, is bustling with activity as coaches teach fighters better submission holds on the mats.

Pimblett has had a light session after recently learning he needed surgery on his ankle, which means he will not fight at next month’s UFC 286 at the O2 Arena, where the main event will be a third blockbuster bout between welterweight champion Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman.

In the interim, Pimblett is to get married to his partner of 12 years in May with a stag do planned for Ibiza. Among the possible attendees to the wedding are local musician Jamie Webster and seven-time snooker world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan.

Pimblett’s meteoric rise has led to accusations that he is fame-hungry more than anything else. But he makes it abundantly clear that fighting is the most important thing to him.

“My uncle [Frank Pimblett, who briefly played for Aston Villa in the 1970s] was a waste of talent and that was something I didn't ever want to be,” he says.

“My uncle is probably like the best football player this city has ever produced. You won’t see anything major about him because he f----- it all up. My dad always says it to me, he was a wasted talent and that’s one thing I never wanted to be.

“When I started training I got good, became a pro then I lost my fifth fight. I was thinking about quitting, not doing MMA anymore because my mates were earning more money doing other things and I was in the gym hardly earning anything.

“My dad told me about my uncle and it just hit home, you can’t waste your talent. You see it a lot, like I know a lot of people in this city who were brilliant footballers, brilliant fighters, brilliant at many different things, but they never caught a break. I did and I need to run with it.”

Back at the cafe, Pimblett picks a spot in the corner next to the window. Lenny is not far away on his lead and the plates start filling up the table at lightning speed.

The people inside the diner are not starstruck by regular Pimblett, although attention does follow him most places he goes.

“[I] get them all day lad,” he says, when asked how he deals with fans asking for selfies. “The missus hates it because it stops us doing things and gets in the way. When someone just grabs you, that's the most annoying moment.

“Sometimes I have to walk around with a hat on and my hood up. When I go to Anfield, I don't want to hide myself but if I don't I'm stood outside the ground taking pictures for 40 minutes. People still recognise me when I’ve got my hood up.”

One of the keys to Pimblett’s immense profile is his willingness to share his opinions on a wide-range of topics. When his ‘problems’ at Anfield are raised, the conversation quickly segues into the club’s transfer mistakes, in Pimblett’s eyes.

“We should have given Mane £300k and sold Mohamed Salah,” he declares, with Novak Djokovic next in the firing line.

“I hate him,” Pimblett says. “I don’t care that [Roger] Federer doesn’t have the most grand slams, he is the best ever. It p----- me off that Djokovic and [Rafael] Nadal are still winning stuff when Federer was better than the pair of them. He’s class. If Federer was five years younger, he’d be slapping them around.”

Between fights, Pimblett is known for piling on the pounds, even to the extent he gets compared to Scottish musician Lewis Capaldi. But he has never struggled to make the 66kg weight for his fights.

As his feast draws to an end, Pimblett decides to take his doughnut home in a takeaway box and begins talking with some of the other customers, drawing the attention of schoolchildren who are beginning to walk past the cafe.

Some are too busy on their smartphones to notice Pimblett, but others do spot him and soon a small group begins to gather. In an effort to give Pimblett some privacy, the cafe owners put the shutters down but it fails to deter one of them, who crawls under and asks for a picture. But, unfortunately for him, his request is denied after he failed to say please.

“I just think people should have manners,” Pimblett says.

Pimblett, now with his hood up, sneaks out the back door of the cafe and he briefly evades detection as he heads to his nearby car before being spotted and soon swarmed with children around him and Lenny.

“I love it when all the kids come over. It's sick, it’s boss and shows the support I’ve got but it is proper intruding privacy that,” Pimblett explains once in the car and safely away.

Prior to his last fight in December, against Jared Gordon in Las Vegas, Pimblett’s status was at an all-time high having firmly established himself as one to watch with back-to-back submission finishes. But Pimblett needed the judges decision to overcome Gordon and his abundance of confidence has taken a knock, albeit only a slight one.

“The pressure has never got to me but I don't know if it did that day - it might of,” says Pimblett, now at home with Lenny settled next to him on the sofa.

“First ever co-main event in Vegas. No one was a---- about the main event, everyone was talking about me and I looked like a bag of s---. I built it up like I was gonna finish him because I thought I was but I built the expectation on myself. And then let everyone down.”

Pimblett is, perhaps, being too harsh on himself as Ellis Hampton, one of his coaches, explains that what Pimblett means to the people of Liverpool goes beyond what happens in the cage.

“Conor made it [the UFC] big and it grew from there, getting a lot of younger kids into it,” Hampton says. “Paddy has a different audience from younger to older, mums and nans, but for the kids in the city, he’s very good for them to look up at and see that.”

Pimblett recently started a charity, the Baddy Foundation, aimed at tackling mental health stigmas - a topic he has excelled speaking about - and also helping feed young children. Throughout the day he has proudly worn a t-shirt from James' Place, a men's suicide prevention charity.

While Pimblett has bold ambitions of a career in Hollywood one day, punching, kicking and elbowing people is what he does best and he is determined to make the most of it. And although Pimblett has spent some time in San Diego training in a studio, he has no plans to leave Liverpool any time soon.

Asked why he does not want to leave his hometown, Pimblett says simply: “I’m loyal.”